- The British duo serve up techno-dembow fusions with misty atmospheres and even a bit of mischievous drill & bass.
- Dual Monitor's first EP for Bristol label Hardline feels like a purposeful show of brevity. It's structured like a bleep test of tough, athletic, dembow-infused techno that climbs from a buoyant 130 BPM to a bashful 160.
The first half of HARD19 certainly lives up to the label's motto, "no-nonsense club music." Like a runner in a flow state, its syncopated techno drive and misty atmosphere instils a heads-down focus. The cast of manipulated voices that call out snappy instructional phrases could have come from a cursed home workout DVD—a beastly grunt on "Level Up," a helium-huffing two-note call on the infectious "Left/Right." Labels like TraTraTrax, Voam and Wajang have been pushing a similar fusion of techno and dembow over the last few years. Dual Monitor push at the edges with genre-bending moments such as "Switch It," which pulsates and snaps at a footwork pace.
Short switch-ups and impulsive tendencies—like how "Quatros Oxide" gets pulled into the '90s with jittery acid scribbles and on-beat metallic clangs—define the second half of the EP, as if you could hear the duo's excitement ratcheting up. "Switch It" starts off gaseous and clicky before descending into a drill & bass frenzy, with barreling breaks, double-time kicks and micro-chopped percussion all jostling for attention. It's like the duo are testing the dance floor's pulse rate before driving dancers to maddening extremes. Don't believe me? Run the EP back and you'll find that track one now feels like a cooldown by comparison.
Tracklist01. Level Up
02. Left/Right
03. Quattros Oxide
04. Switch It